Apr 21, 2016 By Mike Rosenbaum

Salesforce + SteelBrick: Accelerating CPQ Innovation with Lightning

in Sales Cloud, Sales, Lightning

I’ve been at Salesforce for 10+ years and in enterprise technology for 14+ years. And I can honestly say that I’ve never seen an acquisition integrate as smoothly or take off as quickly as SteelBrick has at Salesforce.

We aren’t even 90 days into the acquisition and one thing is already very clear: this is going to be a monumental transformation for Salesforce, Sales Cloud Lightning and every one of our customers. Why? Because the addition of SteelBrick CPQ has given us the ability to automate the complete lead-to-cash process on the Salesforce Lightning platform.

All too often, acquisitions get bogged down on the sheer logistics of integrating teams and innovation stalls out. But combining SteelBrick and Salesforce has actually accelerated both of our organizations because we share a platform, Lightning. SteelBrick now has more resources and is innovating faster, and our existing, core Lightning team is benefiting from the SteelBrick team’s feedback. CPQ is highly data intensive and by working with the SteelBrick team, we’ve been able to make the Lightning platform even more powerful.

Today, we’re kicking off the SteelBrick Customer Success Summit and I’m excited to be announcing new advancements to SteelBrick and to bring this technology to our customers.

Here’s what’s new:

User-Defined Discount Schedules: Most companies offer discount tiers, but keeping track of fluctuating prices and discount schedules globally can be challenging, especially as products become increasingly complex. Now, reps can easily view accurate discount schedules on the same screen where they’re building price quotes. The result? It’s easier to see the maximum discount applicable and ensure that customers get the best possible pricing option.

Quote Term Editor: Most sales quotes include a Terms and Conditions section, which sometimes need to be edited. With the new quote term editor, each section of the Terms and Conditions can be locked or unlocked - in accordance with the company’s guidelines -- and sales reps can make quick changes on deal-specific content without requiring extra internal review cycles.

Real-Time Price Rules in Configuration: When building a product bundle, sales reps can now see a real-time display of any changes they make to product pricing. This saves time for sales reps and ensures that they are always seeing current product configurations and pricing, enabling them to easily build the best product bundle to fit a customer’s needs.

At the end of the day, I always say that Salesforce users are really looking for two main things -- better sales productivity and better customer experience. SteelBrick helps with both. With SteelBrick now in Sales Cloud Lightning, a rep can create a competitive price quote for a customer in just a few minutes. According to the Aberdeen Group, the sales cycle can be reduced 28% with a CPQ tool, hugely impacting rep productivity. (Breaking the Laws of Physics: Shortening the Last Sales Mile through Workflow Automation, Aberdeen, April 2013).

And this is just the beginning. There is a lot more coming as we look to extend the power of CPQ across Salesforce. Stay tuned!